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INDIANAPOLIS — Purdue University students who feared that a camera-equipped weather balloon they’d launched was destroyed during the recent tornado outbreak has been reunited with their pricey scientific instruments, thanks to an Ohio farmer.

The students had launched the high-altitude balloon the day before the Nov. 17 tornado outbreak and thought it was gone forever, like most weather balloons, as days passed without word of its fate.

But nearly a week later, farmer Joseph Recker contacted Purdue officials to let them know the instruments had landed in one of his fields near the northwestern Ohio town of Kalida.

Recker, the uncle of former Indiana University basketball star Luke Recker, was harvesting soybeans on Friday when his combine nearly ran over what he thought was a party balloon. He found it was a parachute tethered to the balloon’s instrument package.

“I was thinking, ‘Obviously, this thing’s worth something. I better get it back to who owns it,’ ” Recker said yesterday.

But the severe storms had washed away contact information written on the balloon, leaving its origins a mystery until Recker removed a data card from the camera.

A computer-savvy person at a fertilizer business accessed the card’s files, revealing an hours-long video of the balloon’s wild, high-altitude journey. The footage includes images of Earth’s curved rim and menacing clouds far below.

The first minutes of footage showed glimpses of the balloon’s student creators — some wearing Purdue sweatshirts — working to launch it. So Recker contacted Purdue officials, who alerted the balloon team.

Dahlon Lyles, a senior in mechanical-engineering technology from San Antonio, said the dozen students who launched the balloon were elated. He said the video camera, a radiation monitor, GPS unit and other devices on the balloon are worth about $1,200.

The balloon was launched on Nov. 16 in West Lafayette and soared to nearly 100,000 feet before its hydrogen-filled balloon burst as planned about three hours later.

Its instrument package parachuted down, but a jet stream caught it and helped push it the 194 miles to Recker’s farm, LimaOhio.com reported.

Lyles said the team is going to put together a thank-you letter for Recker and plans to send him some “Purdue swag.”

The team’s adviser, technology professor Davin Huston, said the students plan to relaunch their instruments on another balloon in January, but for now they’re digesting the footage their camera recorded — images they’ve uploaded to YouTube.

A balloon the team launched on Nov. 9 traveled about 230 miles and landed in Dublin, LimaOhio.com reported.